Flash! A-aaaah! (Flash Gordon part two)

Did you miss part 1?

So now we are in 2010. As part of my anthologizing project of putting everything I ever recorded on my cassette four track onto my computer for potential remixing, I recently came across "Marriage of Dale and Ming (And Flash Approaching)". It was every bit as hilarious as I'd remembered and also strangely moving. I'd still only ever recorded the two songs, and that was in 1996 and 1997. At this pace, two songs in fourteen years, I would finish the 18 song album in 2066, at 94 years of age, three years after Zefram Cochrane invents warp drive and the Vulcans make contact with Earth. To pick up the pace, I decided to record a third song from the soundtrack, using a fun, simple beat that had been going on in my mind on and off for a few weeks.

At first I could not find the music. I had to give the original book back about thirteen years ago but I had the good sense to make copies of all the Flash Gordon songs. I had put them in a pristine white folder I found in a dumpster (not that I was looking there, you understand. It practically jumped out at me. Originally it contained information about a hospital's taxes or some such thing.) along the river in Northfield behind Division Street. Can you believe the things people just throw out? Anyway, I searched my archives but it still took me a few days to find it, and I only found it while I was looking for something else.

I have been listening to a ton of Beatles lately and have had this cheerful beat going through my mind a lot. I thought it was the beat to "She Loves You" but a quick look at my Beatles Complete Scores revealed that it's not quite. Nevertheless, I used the half measure intro to "She Loves You" and the beat I had in my mind as a starting point for my new recording, which I decided would be "Flash (A.K.A. Flash's Theme)" That was the song that most intimidated me in terms of actually finishing the album, so I decided to tackle it head on. I had it in mind to use a typical Beatles/Ringo tom-heavy "bridge section" beat for the bridge section but couldn't really find one in Complete Scores, so I just used a dramatically slowed down version of the lopsided "Ticket To Ride" beat for the bridge.

I set up my drum kit last Sunday. That in itself was an adventure, as I haven't had it set up for a while. I had to take the heads off, clean it, remove the sponges the previous owner had put in for no reason I can discern and I never got around to removing all of until now, reassemble, and tune it. I recorded the drums first and they were a little too fast. Take four was good enough that I thought I would continue with it. Next was acoustic guitar, then bass, then electric guitar.

For the electric, I used a Chandler mother-of-pearl "Serious About Tone" pick because I've heard Brian May is nuts about picks and sometimes uses English coins to get the most powerful sound. They don't make those picks anymore but I have a stash. I knew I wouldn't get the Queen guitar sound, so I went for The Carpenters instead. On "Goodbye To Love" Richard C. plugged his electric directly into the recording sound board and turned it up until the VU meters were deep in the red. It's awesome. I did a similar thing and it sounded very raucous and inspiring. I ended up taking an impromptu solo during one of the spoken sections. It ended up sounding like a surf instrumental.

If you really want to know the kind of thing that is almost always going on in my actual mind, sometimes even while I am talking to people in person, you will continue bravely on and

Go to part 3.